"<< Background >>According to the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the Covid-19 pandemic has deepened and widened pre-existing inequalities that undermine children’s ability to enjoy their human rights, including in terms of health, safety, education, and living conditions. All youth workers from the partners involved in this partnership have witnessed first-hand how COVID-19 and the regulations have impacted the rights of the children and adolescents they work with. There is a clear risk that COVID-19 will have adverse long-term effects on children and the fulfilment of their rights. Youth work and non-formal education has proven to be key in reaching out to vulnerable communities, to empower them in learning, living, and claiming their rights. Therefore, the common objective of Mobile School vzw, Uit de Marge vzw, ARSIS and the European Playwork Association, is to support youth workers directly in their work on, with, and for children’s rights. As ""Digitalisation is very important to reach young people and provide access to international youth work (RAY-CAP, 2015-2018)"", we will create and make everything accessible via online, user-friendly platforms. By using online learning platforms to share our educational materials and trainings, we want to make dissemination easier, making it possible to share this toolkit and training efficiently with youth workers across Europe.Additionally, this pandemic has affected the way youth workers work and interact with the target population. In order to be ready to prevent further harm to children and adolescents, youth workers are looking for guidance and specific methodologies to work on this topic. The need for updated tools and adjusted methodologies tailored to the post-pandemic era is essential to improve their work and address the increased inequalities that have been identified.Moreover, as new youth workers and volunteers join youth work organizations, there is also the need for them to adopt a comprehensive view of children’s rights, under a common European scope, and to be trained in methods and tools on how to effectively apply the values in their work with children. Most of them have an idea about the Convention but are not always aware how to apply it in their work with children, adolescents or external stakeholders. Those who know how to apply it, often lack the theoretical framework.It is important to note that the defense of children’s rights requires a holistic approach. Youth organizations provide multiple services to their beneficiaries, employing, or using the help of professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers, etc... All of these people have a high level of expertise in their field of work,but are unaware of the principles and guidelines of youth work. Introducing these professionals to youth work methodologies and children’s rights through online training is considered a high need that will lead to much better results.Within this project, youth workers from Belgium, Greece and Germany will get time to research, explore and create new materials and exchange their own best practices, not only between them, but also with other youth workers in Europe, providing them with qualitative, non-formal educational materials and training on children’s rights.<< Objectives >>With the results of this project, youth workers will be encouraged to start working on children’s rights with pragmatic tools for children and can follow a self-paced online learning programme on this matter. This will firstly give an answer to the need for innovative tools on children’s rights in non-formal education and secondly provide a very accessible training with limited time investment of the youth worker on a crucial topic.We aim to empower youth workers through training and education and by offering them a free and comprehensive methodology they can use to address these topics with the children and adolescents they work with. By using online learning platforms to share our educational materials and trainings, we want to make dissemination easier, making it possible to share this toolkit and training efficiently with youth workers across Europe.Children’s rights are grouped into 4 categories: Survival, Development, Protection, and Participation. Our aim is to produce an educational toolkit with strong digital elements, adapted to the post-pandemic era in non-formal education, that will consist of educational materials on these 4 categories, plus on 1 extra general category. Besides the toolkit - and as a second project result - we will create 6 different self-paced online learning programmes, freely accessible on a learning management system. The programme topics are in line with the educational toolkits which will be created and focus on children’s rights. By realising the project within the partnership, there will be an added value for the StreetSmart methodology of Mobile School vzw, adding new resources and tools to the open platform StreetSmart Play and to the training platform StreetSmart Learn, making it even more interesting for youth workers to visit the platforms to train themselves. This project will also help all partners in this partnership to train new staff and volunteers in their organisation, as when COVID-regulations are reduced, youth work and non-formal education will be more important than ever before and there will be a need to hire and train new staff on this important topic. For Uit de Marge vzw and the European Playwork Association, this will give them an advantage in offering new innovative tools to their own network of youth workers.With this project we want to improve 21st century skills of young professionals outside this partnership: on the one hand by offering all tools in a user-friendly way online, we contribute to making these tools accessible to a large number of youth workers who didn’t have access before. On the other hand, we want to encourage young people facing youth unemployment to teach themselves, while getting experience in NGOs as volunteers. By providing them with professional resources, we can increase their potential and possibility to find a job afterwards.<< Implementation >>The steps to create the educational toolkit are: 1)Research existing tools & cases:All partners will have to do an extensive research of existing tools and contact the children’s rights department of their country to see which resources are already available. All tools will be categorized based on the 5 topics we want to produce materials on and will be analyzed to criteria for use in non-formal education. Gaps, different methods and activities will be identified. At the same moment we will start looking into different storylines on children’s rights and select a few cases which illustrate the five topics we want to elaborate.2)Conceptual design of posters and activitiesFor the animated posters with QR codes, we will start with a meeting to discuss how we will organize the focus groups with children to include their ideas. For the creation of the 5 other animated posters and other methodologies, we will start from the research of existing tools to identify the most suitable methodologies to cover the topic and will then start a creative process together with the youth workers of the partners. 3)Elaborating cases and storiesBased on the stories children tell during the focus groups, we will create a storyline which will be embedded in the graphical design of the posters, and which will be translated into an audio story. Once the stories are written out and approved by the children and the youth workers, we will record them professionally in the following languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and Greek.4) Preparation and follow-up graphical design animated posters with QR codes & website with audio storiesFor each topic two animated designs will be made. One with a QR code and one without. In order to have a good design, we will have a short feedback loop with the graphical designer. Intermediary feedback will be given by youth workers from the different partners. At the same time, we will develop a website (linked with QR-code) where we can host the audio stories for each topic on separate pages. 5)Online manuals of activitiesAll games will have a clear how-to-play description. We will upload all the content created on the free educational platform StreetSmart Play (http://play.street-smart.be) and the games will be available in the languages of the platform. For the activities of the animated posters, specific how-to-play videos will be made by Mobile School vzw. These videos will be available on the game page. For an example see: https://play.street-smart.be/en/game/view/92 6) Feedback & testingEach partner will use the produced materials and introduce them to youth workers to run activities within small groups of children. Feedback will be requested from both youth workers (using questionaries and focus groups) and children. Production steps to create the online learning programmes are:Based on the input from the first project result, we can develop the good practices and case studies for the learning programme.For every programme we will create several courses, starting with a theoretical introduction course on the Convention, explained in an animated video, followed by training courses and good practices. The video production of the courses will be realized by Mobile School vzw. The input on the good practices will be done by the partners. In each course there will be a mix of different learning materials in order to answer to different learning styles. All materials will be uploaded on a free and open online learning platform StreetSmart Learn and will be evaluated closely during focus group sessions organized by every partner with a group of youth workers who weren’t involved in the project before. Based on their feedback, adaptations will be made to the programme.<< Results >>First, we will develop an interactive educational toolkit on children’s rights on 5 topics: overview children’s rights, the right to Survival, Protection, Development and Participation. The toolkit will also include a strong focus on the consequences of the pandemic, and consists of the following elements:- 10 animated posters on 5 topics: We aim to deliver print files which can be used to promote and protect the different children's rights with children and adolescents, but also with other stakeholders (police, schools, institutions)- Each animated poster will include 3 activities with a detailed how-to explanation in video and manual, accessible online (= 30 activities)- 1 animated poster per topic will include a QR-code, making the poster digitally interactive and leading to a website where two audio stories on this topic will be made available in multiple languages. These audio stories can be played during a youth work intervention or can be used to promote children's rights. This animated poster will include +/- 80 to 100 different interactions and situations where children’s rights are respected or violated. These situations will be defined by children and youth workers themselves. To get a clear insight on how this methodology works, please take a look at the following material: https://play.street-smart.be/en/game/view/92 - The other animated poster will be designed based on the results of the initial research phase. The team of youth workers and designers will decide for each topic which methodology could benefit most from a graphical illustration.- Besides the activities with the animated posters, we will create 10 supplementary activities a youth worker can use to work on each topic, without using the posters. A total of 50 activities will be written out in a manual sheet and made available online.- The toolkit will be published on StreetSmart Play (http://play.street-smart.be) and can be used by all youth workers to work with vulnerable children and adolescents and with other stakeholders.Besides the educational toolkit, we want to develop a self-paced online learning programme consisting of 6 online learning programmes, 1 for each topic on children’s rights and one on COVID-19 and its impact. Each programme consists of self-paced online courses youth workers can follow on their smartphone, tablet or laptop and will include videos, quizzes, animations, tasks, reflections, discussions, …Each learning programme consists of:- An introductory course on the Convention of the Rights of the Child about the specific topic- A training course on how to work on this topic with children and adolescents- Good practices and case studies from partners on how to work with children and adolescents- A training course on how to work on this topic with other stakeholders- Good practices and case studies from partners on this topic with other stakeholdersAll training courses will be made available on the online learning platform StreetSmart Learn and are free to access."